Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Baloreilly (00:00)
I would honestly love a story where Dresden rescues someone from a cult, but it's a totally mundane cult, you know? Just...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:10)
actual supernatural required. It would have to be a later Dresden. Early Dresden is not very good at talking people down from these things.

Baloreilly (00:17)
Yeah, definitely post-Ghost story.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:25)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to Recorded Neutral Territory, a Dresden Files reread podcast. We're tackling chapters two and three of Stormfront today, but the spoilers go all the way through Battleground. I'm your host, Adam Ruzzo, and joining me is a skeptical detective, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Baloreilly (00:45)
Hey Adam, glad to be back. So chapter two picks up immediately where chapter one left off. We're, it seems like 30 minutes into the investigation and a lot is going on. Dresden's had his first client in two weeks or something call him. And then immediately after, Murphy him to come to a crime scene. It seems a little bit too good to be true, a little bit too much coincidence.

I think what's actually going on though is just that Butcher's compressing some events in time without telling us. The mailman in the first chapter probably arrives in the morning. He says Dresden does paperwork afterwards. And it's only after that happens that he gets the two phone calls back to back. So it's a little bit less insane than it might seem reading the first chapter. But we are at most, four or five hours into the

So after we get through just an introduction to Murphy meeting Dresden and the fact that they are wildly different sizes,

So next thing they talk about is just them walking into the Madison Hotel, where the crime scene is, where Murphy has the two bodies. There's a little bit of a playful race to get to the door.

Dresden opens it for her and Murphy glares at him. They're teasing each other, but Dresden immediately goes from that to questioning, this must be a really bad crime scene because Murphy's need to see comforts in ritual friendship stuff tells him there's something really rough up there.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:18)
Yeah, and he even says, quote, how bad was it up there on the seventh floor anyway, unquote. that made me think, like, what has Dresden seen up until this point in Stormfront? We know that canonically, a restoration of faith from the side jobs book takes place before this. It's where he meets Murphy for the first time. And they fight a troll on a bridge and she handles it better than most people. And that's sort of how their friendship starts, which...

is one of the reasons that it explains why she kind of is completely dealing with him in good faith here. And we're going to see in a minute, Carmichael is chewing him out, calling him a fraud in front of her the whole time. And she's just ignoring Carmichael. She's like, I saw him, we both fought a troll on a bridge and I can't explain that to Carmichael because I will lose my job. So instead I just got to deal with it as best I can.

Baloreilly (03:16)
Yeah, we can assume this isn't the first body Harry's seen. In fact, we know it's not. I don't remember if he sees Justin's corpse when he's 16, but we can assume he's definitely seen bodies before.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:29)
Hmm.

as I know, the comics are canon because they were written in congrence with Jim Butcher. And I just finished reading Welcome to the Jungle, which takes place right before Stormfront. And he definitely witnesses several bodies in that one that had been torn apart by something. But that is more of a basic brutal murder. The thing he's about to walk into upstairs...

Baloreilly (03:37)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:57)
is magic being twisted and used to murder people. And that's something he takes personal affront to.

Baloreilly (04:04)
That's definitely adding to his reaction to the scene. think it's also just Dresden has some sensitivity towards, not, this is not a romantic encounter exactly, but towards intimacy, and I think the juxtaposition of the intimacy and the gore definitely gets him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:25)
Yep. So we're going to read our first excerpt here, and it comes as Harry is getting out of the elevator at the murder floor of the Madison. Quote,

who recognized me and waved me past without asking to see the little laminated card the city had given me."

Baloreilly (05:00)
That is so visceral to me. I don't remember if it was the Dresden Files, but I remember someone describing the odor of blood as high copper in something that I read or saw once, and it just stuck with me. Every time I, I cut myself or something, I think, my God, yeah, that's exactly what it smells like. this, plus in the last chapter, he describes something Murphy says is she said it with a greenish tinge.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:10)
Hmm.

yeah, Blood Smells a Certain Way is a great opener to this scene.

Baloreilly (05:29)
Yeah, really, I think he's great at conveying the nauseousness that, especially in these early works, some of like the

gory scenes might drive you to feel. So they walk into the room. Murphy walks in first, and Dresden describes the smell of blood growing thicker. Murphy tells him to wait, and Dresden, quote, I wandered around the sitting room with my eyes mostly closed, noting things. Leather couch, two leather chairs.

Stereo and television in Black Glossy Entertainment Center. Champagne bottle warming in a stand holding a brimming tub of what had been ice the night before, with two empty glasses set beside it. There was a red rose petal on the floor clashing with the carpeting. But then in that room, what didn't?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (06:23)
Yeah, so this section here again, showing not telling Harry's observational skills, right? And this goes on to show that he's done more observations than just that section that we read there. He noticed the underwear on the floor. He checked the song that was playing in the stereo and he put together basically what the other detectives had put together, right?

But overall, I think it kind of shows that he's been doing at least some learning on this job. he mentions specifically, quote, the more delicate and modern the machine is, the more likely there is that something will go wrong if I get close enough to it.

Baloreilly (07:01)
Butcher does give us a taste of magical affecting the world here, but what is it wrapped up in? It's wrapped up in procedural detective work. he's telling us that Harry's a wizard, but he's showing us that Harry's Holmesian in his attention to detail. Because like you said, Harry gets to where the police got immediately upon walking in. He's really, really good at this. He's not just playing at being a detective.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:04)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (07:27)
Right now, he's probably better at being a detective than he is at being a wizard.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:31)
Yeah, honestly, that's probably true considering how far he has to go to get to somebody like the senior counsel or even the Harry of Battleground, which isn't that many years later, 15-ish, 16 years, something like that. So yeah, he probably has more experience as a detective and it's easier to become better as a detective faster than it is to become a very good wizard. We can see specifically how long it takes them to do it.

Baloreilly (08:01)
Right, now after we get through this observation, we get to meet Carmichael, Murphy's partner, who is a significant character in the early part of the series and makes a return cameo later on. Carmichael, we immediately know, is not Harry's biggest fan in the police force. Butcher says, quote, he was Murphy's partner and the resident skeptic.

convinced that I was nothing more than a charlatan scamming the city. So Carmichael is fairly civil with Harry, but we're told immediately, thinks that he has no place at this crime scene.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:43)
Yeah, he's already made up his mind.

Baloreilly (08:44)
So as Harry and Carmichael have a brief interaction, I think it's important to recognize that Harry's often uppity towards authority figures that don't like him, but he's not immediately antagonistic towards Carmichael. And one thing he's been careful to do in these first two chapters is address Murphy and Carmichael by their professional titles, Lieutenant Murphy, Detective Carmichael. Harry is somebody who...

pushes back against authority figures that he feels like are mistreating him, but he's not so sensitive as to let everything keep him from being polite, from being courteous. Harry has both old world courtesy and the old world need for people to be respectful towards each other, even though he, know, wisecracks whenever somebody steps out of

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:36)
Yeah. And it just occurred to me He also respects Carmichael. He specifically describes him as being overweight and balding with bloodshot eyes and a weak chin. His jacket is rumpled. His tie is stained. But all of that is essentially concealing a razor intellect, right? He knows Carmichael knows his stuff. And I assume he's worked with him enough in the past to see

that Carmichael is able to put things together very well. He's a sharp cop is what he says. And that respect for his professional capabilities allows Harry to be respectful towards him despite the fact that Carmichael doesn't believe in Harry. And that ability to get over yourself and your own ego, to respect someone else's capabilities is actually something that Harry and Marcon have in common, which we're gonna find out in the next chapter.

Baloreilly (10:32)
Absolutely, and it's important to note that that's mutual to a certain extent. After Harry tells Carmichael what he saw when he looked at the room, Carmichael says, quote, not bad Sherlock. So Carmichael's not treating Harry like he's an idiot. He just doesn't think he's a wizard. Then...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:51)
and

that he's basically bilking the police department for money, So it's like, maybe, yeah, maybe he's a good private eye, but he's still taking money from the city and not giving us much more than any of us could have already done.

Baloreilly (11:03)
That takes us to the room itself, however, which is... yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:06)
boy, yeah, let's,

this is a heck of a description to jump into in chapter two, so be Quote, they must have died sometime the night before, as rigor mortis had already set in. They were on the bed, she was astride him, body leaned back, back bowed like a dancer's, the curves of her breasts making a lovely outline. He stretched beneath her, a lean and powerfully built man.

arms reaching out and grasping at the satin sheets, gathering them into his fists. had it been an erotic photograph, it would have made a striking tableau.

except that the lovers rib cages on the upper left side of their torsos had expanded outwards through their skin, the ribs jabbing out like ragged snapped knives. Arterial blood had sprayed out of their bodies all the way to the mirror on the ceiling, along with pulped gelatinous masses of flesh that had to be what remained of their hearts. Standing over them, I could see into the upper cavity of their bodies.

I noted the now grayish lining around the motionless left lungs and the edges of the ribs, which apparently were forced outward and snapped by some force within. It definitely cut down on the erotic potential."

Baloreilly (12:27)
man, that is exquisite modern noir. It's a little bit titillating in the beginning. he does actually describe, the eroticism of the scene, but he spends most of the time grossing you out

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:34)
Yeah.

And the juxtaposition of those two things makes it more gross, right? It feels weird to be titillated at all by this scene. So when he starts with how erotic it would be if it was a photograph of these two people being alive, that is completely undercut by what comes next. And it makes you feel more disgusting than if he had just started with the description of the bodies and the ribcage is splitting open.

Baloreilly (13:10)
That's a great point, and it's definitely deliberate by Butcher, sort of showing off some of that writing master's skill there to really drive home how uncomfortable the scene should make you, because you can't see and smell all of the gore in the air. And then ending with the little sardonic humor it cut down on the erotic potential. I mean, that's your hard-boiled private eye to a T, just,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:33)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (13:37)
commenting on, with dry sarcasm, on a literally wet scene.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:44)
Yeah, when he was walking through the carpet, it squelched as he walked around, literally a wet scene. other thing that you know, as hard-boiled as Harry pretends to be, just like all the other cops, this scene is so over the top that he has to go and throw up very shortly after seeing it. He tries very hard.

to hold it together, Carmichael said, I'll have the bucket out here. And he goes and uses that Chekhov's bucket. Like it's gonna get used.

Baloreilly (14:15)
Yeah, it's really great at showing that while Harry is an excellent detective, he's not an inhuman one. That's a characteristic that a lot of detectives and a lot of great detective fiction have, where they're so disconnected from average human interactions. You your Sherlock Holmes is the example of this. keep referring to him, but Harry's not Holmes because Harry's too emotional. He's too connected to other people to let himself be that dispassionate about a scene like this.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (14:29)
Hmm.

Yep, and then he has a defense mechanism where he uses humor to hide how much this unnerves him. And we have a little passage here.

Baloreilly (14:55)
Right, quote, well, Murphy demanded, are we dealing with magic here, or aren't we? Either that, or was really incredible sex, I told her, end quote.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:06)
And

he even gets a laugh out of Carmichael, but I think that's the same thing is they're all using that humor deaden what they're feeling inside. Because the next line down here is he laughs a little too, quote, and that was all the screaming part of my brain needed to slam open the doors I'd shut on it. My stomach revolted and heaved and I lurched out of the room unquote. He immediately,

has to go, so he like just laughing a little bit and he loses it. He was holding himself together by the barest of threads.

Baloreilly (15:41)
He really does, it drives home that connection to humanity because as soon as he engages with another person, he shares the experience of laughing at the line with Carmichael. Now it's too much. That one little motion in the chest and feeling human again and all of sudden, he's spilling his guts. What Harry also notices here though, what makes it especially disgusting to him is that he knows immediately

that someone has murdered these two people with magic.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:14)
And he then goes on to explain his theory of what happened in the room, how they showed up and did this and then went to the bed. And then Carmuckle's like, listen, we already figured all that out. And then he goes on to say, this could have only been done by magic. There's only two types of magic that would allow them to do this. The first one is evocation. The second one is Thalmaturgie. He gives us a little bit of a definition of what these things are.

And then you get to Harry's intuition, which we see a lot of in the books. My instincts screamed at me that somebody was about to attack me or.

that I was on the right track or something. His instincts are a huge asset to him throughout the books. And the first thing that we see in the books is his instincts letting him down because of this line. The killer knew the victims and I'm thinking it was a woman. This is an excellent red herring slash misdirection by Butcher. We know it was Victor Sells and this was essentially a

Baloreilly (16:59)
Yep.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:16)
rival gang, But Harry, he immediately thinks it's a woman because somebody doing this with magic has to mean it and women are usually better at hating. he has just very specific stereotypical ideas about women versus men and it applies to the way that he thinks.

Baloreilly (17:34)
And it's very funny because of course Harry's projecting here. That's what he would need to feel to do this to someone. He would need a personal animus. But it's actually just business really from the person casting the spell.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (17:38)
Hmm.

That's right, that's a very good point. We do see different types of magic, mortal magic, fey magic, divine, angel and demon magic, things like that. But even the mortal magic seems to be used in so many different ways and we really only get to hear about it from Harry's internal perspective about how he thinks magic works. But this is a great misdirection because

We're invested in this character that's kind of like an underdog. We want him to be right when sneering Carmichael is saying, what does this guy know? You know, it kind of makes us want to root for Harry. And then making him wrong is a great way to provide the audience with something that subverts their expectations. If you could guess the outcome to every mystery, it wouldn't be very interesting.

Baloreilly (18:35)
He does a really good job, Butcher, of making sure that it's not a cookie-cutter plot that we can figure out immediately. Harry is wrong here, and he does some things to telegraph that maybe Harry is getting off on the wrong foot, but Butcher's pretty good at making it at least a little bit doubtful as to whether the protagonist is right, whether the protagonist will succeed, and, you know, who precisely the killer is. One thing I also love about this is Harry's assertion that, quote,

the killer could have murdered them both and made it look like an accident, but she did it this way. Harry's saying that because Harry's assuming that somebody who did this with magic is better than him because he doesn't know how to do it. In reality, Victor Sells probably couldn't have killed both of them and made it look like an accident because his capacity for doing magic is fairly limited. So Harry's made a few mistakes here in evaluating

the magical killer's profile, so to speak. But Murphy pushes him on those mistakes and tries to interrogate why he's coming to these conclusions.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:48)
that leads to our next excerpt.

Quote, Murphy glared at me. You keep saying she, she challenged me. Why the hell do you think that? I gestured toward the room. Because you can't do something that bad without a whole lot of hate, I said. Women are better at hating than men. They can focus it better, let it go better. Hell, witches are just plain meaner than wizards. This feels like feminine vengeance of some kind to me. But a man could have done it, Murphy said. Well, I hedged.

Christ, you are a chauvinist pig, Dresden."

Baloreilly (20:23)
So I think it's really important that we talk about something here that you'll see a lot when the Dresden Files is brought up as a critical piece of media. And that's the idea that the books are.

sexist or misogynistic to some degree. Murphy straight up accuses Dresden of being sexist here and I think it's really important for us to recognize that there's two separate questions that that brings to mind. One is, is the author sexist? And two is, is the character sexist? So Butcher has Murphy put this question to Harry. Harry's wrong about this and Murphy is a lieutenant

in the police force, a very successful professional woman who is rightly pointing out his lack of evidence. I think that if you define feminism as believing women and men are equally capable and that women deserve an equal seat at the table to men, Jim Butcher is certainly, meeting that standard and he's certainly writing books that have a lot of characters that... No, I'm a man.

but that my perspective sees as strong female iconic figures.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:35)
with agency

and their own thing going on, like what the biggest criticisms that you see on places like men writing women, the subreddit, is basically women characters who are there to be a tool of the plot or to be there as a reward for the main character who's a man or something to that effect that they don't come across as anything other than two dimensional.

because they were inserted for plot reasons and not a lot of thought was put into who is this person, what are they doing in their life, et cetera. But of all the different criticisms that I have heard, and I do think that some of the ones about the Dresden Files are legitimate, and we're gonna talk about those at some point, I'm sure, I don't think you can say that the female characters are two-dimensional or just put in there to be, girlfriend material for Harry.

A lot of them are antagonists and very smart ones at that. is an ally that becomes kind of an antagonist and then is back to pretty a rock solid ally, but she is a great example because we see a lot of her life and it does not revolve around Dresden. And that is an important element to any female character in a story being written by a man in my opinion.

Baloreilly (22:54)
Right, I mean the work's certainly passed the Benchel test. know, on a lot of occasions women are talking about things that are not Dresden and I love the scene in Wraith Manor in the turncoat where the Neglossi attacks and Lucio and Lara are talking to each other and Harry is clearly outranked by Lucio. He's like just kind of piping up every once in a while to throw out information like the women are talking, you know, sit down. But I think it's important to recognize that

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:57)
Yes.

Yeah.

Baloreilly (23:24)
While Butcher, I think, isn't writing a book that's misogynistic or sexist, I think it's reasonable for Murphy to call Harry a chauvinist at this point. I don't know if that's the word I'd use, but I think he is sexist. And you might ask, that might raise the question, okay, so this guy wants to write a book with great female characters, he's created this protagonist who's definitely supposed to be a heroic figure. Why is this protagonist sexist?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (23:34)
Yeah.

Baloreilly (23:51)
if the author thinks that that's bad? Well, first of all, protagonists should have flaws. Flaws should be things that they learn from and evolve past. And I think we do see Harry do that in the books. But I also think it's really important to ground Harry's personality in what we later come to find out about Harry's life. So Harry's mother dies giving birth to him.

The first woman that Harry falls in love with is enthralled by one of his father figures and then as far as he knows, dies in a fire that he's partially caused The third female figure in his life at that point is the Lananchi, who's a bloodthirsty, ax crazy, witch. his life is full of women who Susan Rodriguez in later.

books are either people who he loves, who are taken from him by outside forces that he can't stop because he's too weak, or it's filled with women who are scary. So Dresden sees women as being very different from him. They are the people who are predated upon by the supernatural and harmed

And he needs to protect them because that's what killed my mom. That's what killed my first girlfriend. that's a driving impetus in his life.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:15)
Yeah.

And he

mentions it a couple of times, I think even in this book, but definitely over the next 10 books at least, where he really hates seeing bad things happen to women in particular. Like he hates seeing anything bad happen to anyone, but when it's a woman or especially a child or a small girl, he is driven into a rage that is unthinkable if it was just some dude that he didn't know.

Baloreilly (25:46)
And Harry presents this as being part of a chivalric code that's, old, that he's following from almost an intellectual perspective. But I just don't think that's it. I think Butcher has clearly laid out that Harry's highly traumatized by a really traumatic backstory, and he acts in ways that are irrational in the face of that.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:53)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (26:07)
In Harry's world, it's irrational for him to feel this special need to protect women. It's an emotional response. And that's why he does some things and treats women in some ways that I think are sexist. And it's a character flaw that gets him into trouble over and over again.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:26)
And I think in particular, one of the more justifiable

criticisms of the Dresden Files vis-a-vis feminism is the male gaze element of it, and we're probably going to see some of that in chapter four. So we'll put a bit of a pin in this and come back to it. We have the next reading you're going to be doing here, Brian, is about Murphy and Carmichael's relationship here.

Baloreilly (26:50)
Right, so Carmichael is commenting on Harry's observations. Quote, at 50 bucks an hour, it better not be too long, Carmichael growled. Murphy glanced at him. She didn't exactly agree with him, but she didn't exactly slap him down either. I took the opportunity to take a few long breaths, calming myself down. I finally looked back at

Okay, I asked. Who are they? The victims. You don't need to know that, Carmichael snapped. Wrong, Murphy said. I could really use some coffee.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:31)
is a fantastic examination of who Murphy is as a character. Because in this situation, we didn't read all of it. This is just the culmination of it. Everything that Dresden and Murphy have been talking about with each other, trying to figure out what's going on, Dresden's explaining how thaumaturgy works and how this could have made a man a woman, et cetera, et cetera.

The entire time Carmichael is scoffing or throwing his own thing, some expert in there, and Murphy has been ignoring it. A lesser person would have gotten into it with Carmichael. Like, I'm your boss, I'm trying to do something, you gotta stop butting in, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She recognizes that that is not a healthy or productive

way to go about dealing with this interpersonal problem that she has with her second and commander partner.

Baloreilly (28:29)
Right, she respects

Carmichael enough to let him have his opinion.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:32)
Right, and ignoring him is the more diplomatic solution. She obviously, I'm sure that she takes some small amount of offense every time he's doing this to her because what he's kind of saying is you're being duped here, Murphy. And he's demonstrating that every time he opens his mouth to make some kind of snide remark about how Harry's not worth anything, we shouldn't trust anything he says. Here, we see that coming to a head and...

He's trying to say we should not be giving out any information to this. And she finds a diplomatic solution to it. She says, I could really use some coffee. Go grab me some coffee. A, that gets Carmichael out of the way and allows Harry to get the information he needs. And it provides Murphy with plausible deniability. And that is a perfect demonstration of a really good leader.

Somebody who's able to put their own emotions aside and make sure that the situation itself is dealt with. Right now, what's important is finding the killer, not any personal relationship things that she has with Carmichael. She still has to work with him. She doesn't want to get into a knock-down drag-out, but you could easily see this scene going a different way and them having some big argument in a different writer's hands.

Baloreilly (29:49)
That's exactly the phrase I was going to use. She's such a good leader. Because that remark, Ron, I could really use some coffee, does a couple things. One, she's pulling rank, right? She can't ask her boss, the captain, to get her coffee. So she's reminding him, I'm in charge. She's also getting him out of here. I know that you object to this. I'm not going to make you a part of it. I'm not going to force you to be complicit in something that you don't think we should do. I am still going to do what I think is best.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:00)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (30:18)
It's diplomatic both in the sense that she's doing the thing a lesser person might have done by saying shut up I'm your boss very subtly and she's giving him that out to walk away to get out of the conversation so she can do her job and he doesn't have to be a part of it. But more than even that she's almost putting on a clinic a seminar for Dresden about how to deal with stuff like this.

Don't rise to debate, I'm not gonna let Carmichael sit here until you get too pissed off to, just keep quiet.

So I think it's just, you know, Harry becomes a better leader as the books go on. And you wonder to what extent it's just watching Murphy, because she's just so good.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:00)
Hmm.

Yeah, I remember, I can't remember exactly which book it is, but later on he describes how she's like the longest sitting captain or lieutenant rather of special investigations. And this is just a perfect example of that showing how she's a great leader. So the next piece I wanted to quickly discuss is they talk about the velvet room.

because the woman's name was Jennifer Stanton and she worked at the Velvet Room, We're getting this piece of information here. And he says, I knew about Bianca, quote, I knew that she was a vampiress of considerable influence, unquote. I did a double check. This is the only time that he has gendered the word vampire, which is a, a little bit interesting. Later, maybe he just didn't see, he decided, I don't like the word vampiress, because it is difficult and a little weird to say.

But the other thing here is that she was a vampirist, quote, of considerable influence in the Never Never, unquote. This hints that I think Butcher had a different idea for what vampires were. Because as far as I can tell, vampires in the later books have nothing to do with the Never Never. They might use it, they go through it to attack the council and stuff, but they aren't creatures of the Never Never.

They are like ghouls. They don't come from the Never Never. They are predators of our world, which is a very interesting sort of change. And I think that's because he came up with a lot of other things that would be creatures from the Never Never. And some things need to be from our world to make it interesting.

Baloreilly (32:36)
Right, yeah, there's definitely some early episode weirdness in Stormfront. Not only does he use a vampiris, he used witch earlier. Witch is gonna fall out of the books really quick. Everybody just becomes a wizard. I think this suggests that in his original conception, supernatural entities resided in the Never-Never entirely and then visited our world. And he later realized it's way more fun if a lot of the supernatural entities are,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:44)
Yeah

Baloreilly (33:03)
hiding among the flock of sheep, so to speak.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (33:06)
Yep. All right, so then we also learn that Tommy Tom is the name of the dead man on the bed and he works for Marcon. And then they have a bit of a discussion like, okay, was Jennifer Stanton the target or was Tommy Tom the target? Because those imply two very different motives. And this is where we get the first description of Marcon,

Quote, the police department saw Marcon as a mixed blessing after years of merciless struggle and bloody exchanges with the Vargasis, gentlemen Johnny tolerated no excess in his organization unquote. That is how John Marcon is explained for every book hence is that Marcon is a mixed blessing. He's very effective at what he does and maybe that's good. Maybe that's bad. We're to talk about that in a little bit.

Baloreilly (33:54)
Right, so we get this brief introduction to Marcon and the Chicago criminal underworld of the Dresden verse. Dresden tells Murphy to run down the hairstylist angle of Jennifer Stanton's stylist because a thaumaturgical ritual needs a direct link to the person. And then,

Harry asks Murphy how she's doing.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (34:16)
Quote, me, Murphy smiled, a curving of her lips that was a vibrantly feminine expression, making her look entirely too pretty to be such a hard ass. The world's falling apart at the seams, Harry. I guess I just think people are pretty arrogant to believe we've learned everything there is to know in the past century or so. What the hell, I can buy that we're just now starting to see things around us in the dark again. It appeals to the cynic in me, unquote.

Baloreilly (34:43)
Yeah, Murphy is presented as somebody who has an open mind here. And I think that her, she says it appeals to the cynic in her, but really the qualities that she's expressing here isn't cynicism, it's conscientiousness. It's the rigor to look at her own knowledge of the world and realize that there are gaps in

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:06)
and their willingness to admit that one might be wrong, right? Until she met that troll on that bridge, she was probably pretty certain that the world didn't include trolls and vampires and what have you. I think she may have had some inkling because of her dad was in the black cat department and such, but just for the sake of argument, most people before they run into that, they're sure they know what the world is like. And in order to change that belief, they have to have the humility to say,

actually maybe I was wrong. And Butters is another character that we meet later and he has the exact same quality. In fact, I think he explains it very similarly when they're having that conversation in the Blue Beetle, and I think it's Deadbeat, is he talks about, I think it would be a little too arrogant for us to say that we know everything.

Baloreilly (35:57)
And it's funny because they come at it from two completely different places. Butters, scientific, okay, I'm willing to accept any hypothesis and attempt to disprove it. Murphy, we find out later, is a fairly devout Catholic. So Murphy does believe in the supernatural already. She just doesn't necessarily believe in all the supernatural things that she encounters with Dresden. But they have that openness, maybe...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:01)
Hmm.

Baloreilly (36:22)
coming to the same conclusion about their own knowledge, about their need to be humble for somewhat different reasons. I also enjoy here that it takes such a long time. But one of the first things that Harry says about Murthy is she's just got such a pretty smile. just...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (36:38)
you can

hear in the way he describes her differently from all the other women, right? he describes women in a very objectifying way. Like first, let's talk about how great their legs look and their body and their this and their that. But he never does that to Murphy.

Anyway, the next part that we're gonna be talking about here is.

Murphy wants to know how this would be done. How do we track the people that may have done this? And Harry's trying to explain it to her that he can't do it, but doesn't want to explain why.

Baloreilly (37:11)
Quote, no, I said shortly, you don't know. And she didn't. She didn't know about my past, or the White Council, or the doom of Damocles hanging over my head. Most days, I could pretend that I didn't know about it either. All the council needed now was an excuse, just an excuse, to find me guilty of violating one of the seven laws of magic, and the doom would drop.

If I started putting together a recipe for a murder spell and they found out about it, that might be all the excuse they needed.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:46)
This is another example of one of Harry's fundamental flaws early on is his lack of willingness to communicate effectively, or maybe his inability to communicate effectively. There's a way he could have talked to Murphy about this without revealing the existence of the White Council or that he's under the doom of Damocles or something to that effect. He could have explained it in a way that didn't sound so squirrely and make her super suspicious, right?

He could have simply said something along the lines of, there would be extreme personal consequences for me if I tried to figure this out. I can't tell you more about this without risking other equally extreme and bad consequences. Like that at least communicates the fact that he wants to help, but does not want the consequences that would come along with that help. Instead, he just says, you don't understand. And like, I can't do this. he just says, can't, it sounds like he's making excuses.

Baloreilly (38:42)
And it's great because of course what does he also not do? He also doesn't lie very well. What's a much better lie than the one he told? He could say, Murphy, the only way to try to figure this out is to try to do this. It would be like me blindly firing a gun. Now that would be a lie, but that would be a great reason he can't figure this out. And Harry's not that quick on his feet. He doesn't confabulate very well and he doesn't really want to be the kind of person who can do that.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (38:47)
Yeah

Baloreilly (39:10)
I also love here that Butcher is really sticking all the noir tropes. Like, part of the reason why he describes women the way he does is certainly because he's attempting to ape a style that on the whole is much more male-gazy than the Dresden Files books are.

He's gesturing at these tropes that he's not fully indulging in because they are replete in the genre. But he also does the other noir trope. His hard-boiled detective has got a dark past. People are out to get him. Just one more mistake and he's out of this town. You know, that's such a noir thing. And we don't know at this point that...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:36)
Mm-hmm.

You

Baloreilly (39:52)
Harry the Doom of Damocles, know exactly what it is, exactly why it's over Harry's head. We don't know anything about that.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:59)
it's

so good too though. One of the things that makes the world building in these books so great is how Butcher drip feeds us the exposition. There's very rarely a big exposition dump where we get pages and pages of information about something. It's usually in the form of a conversation. And in that conversation, we're learning things about the characters and how they react to information. there's a lot of expedition in Deadbeat where Harry's explaining things to Butters.

But Butter's reaction to those things is like funny or interesting or cool. And that makes the exposition, it breaks up the exposition. So it doesn't feel like reading a textbook. You're actually reading two characters reacting to each other. And this is a perfect example. He just drip feeds you the idea of there is a white council.

They have seven laws, know you don't get to know what they are yet, and he's under something called the Doom of Damocles. Well, why is he under something called the Doom of Damocles? And now he's probed you to want this information. Instead of starting the book with, in the past, I had broken one of the seven laws, which are, and then like, that's just such a high school version of how you write exposition. This is a fantastic way. You get their interest piqued, and then later, when you feed them the exposition, they wanted it the whole time. It doesn't feel like an exposition dump.

Baloreilly (41:16)
Yeah, a great thing that modern fantasy has embraced is the idea of putting mystery in fantasies. But you're obviously ahead of the curve on this. mean, the whole thing is a detective noir thriller in, you know, the year 2000. But one of the great things about that style is by creating these little mysteries and then solving them for us later on, it's a tonally consistent mechanic to use to give us information that is

naturally satisfying for us to experience.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:48)
At least what it's done right, because

we've seen lost, right? That's the mystery box done badly, where you didn't know where it was going. You introduced a mystery and you didn't really know how it was gonna end. Butcher knows how these mysteries are going to end, and that way he can introduce them in the correct book at the correct time, and then reveal the answer most of the time within the same book. Sometimes you have something that is revealed towards the end of a book.

and then it takes until the next book or even three books or what's Anvil's like 11 books later?

Baloreilly (42:22)
I love that Butcher not only plans out these reveals within books and across books, but also it's a real boon to us, the reader, that, and I'm kind of aping Butcher's self-description of this, that he was arrogant enough to plan out the Dresden Files as a 23-book series when he wrote book one.

Like that was apparently the thing he gave to his writing teacher. One day Stormfront, next day 23 Book Outline. And it really works. It's the same thing that a lot of great authors of fantasy series do. Tolkien most obviously, you know, had an entire world, the languages, the geo history of it down before he even touched, the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter One. Butcher similarly has...

a lot of these reveals planned decades in advance. And that allows the narrative to progress in a really satisfying way that's very unlike Lost.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (43:26)
So the next pieces that happen here is she convinces she's trying to convince him to help her out because at this point in this story Her ass is kind of on the line. She doesn't have solid control over this department right now. She's expected to fail so when she Doesn't manage to solve this high-profile double murder at a very important hotel. They can sack her So she's under a lot of pressure here and she asks him

recognizing what he's saying as I can't do this, I can't do this. She's saying, please, I need you to do this. Put aside whatever the problem is and make it happen. And she does it by this quote. Murphy set the hook a second later. She looked up at my eyes for a daring second before she turned away, her face tired and honest and proud. I need to know everything you can tell me, Harry, please. Classic Lady in Distress.

One of those liberated professional women, she knew exactly how to jerk my old fashioned chains around."

Baloreilly (44:29)
I find that to be such projection from Dresden here. I think this is what I'm saying when, it's a deliberate character flaw, how Harry deals with women. If you or I did this to each other, looked each other in the eye, said, listen, man, I really need you to do this for me. This is important. Would we say it was a damsel in distress moment? No, just an earnest request.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (44:53)
that's the

lens that he's seeing this through. But if you read it without Harry's like lensing, right? You try to ignore the pieces that he's adding into the picture. She's just saying, here's a situation at my office. If you can't help me here, I'm tearing your card out of the Rolodex and throwing it away because this is why I'm paying you is to help me in these situations. And this is a very bad situation for me personally. And then she just makes the appeal.

I need to know everything you can tell me, Harry, please. that could be something that a friend asks another friend to do and the other friend really doesn't want to do it, but the first one's putting pressure on them. This is very important to me, I need your help. And doesn't strike me, given all the things we know about her and all the books, that she would use her feminine wiles to manipulate him into helping her. But that's the way he sees it.

Baloreilly (45:44)
This is not a gendered thing. She's not batting her eyelashes at him coquettishly. She's just looking at him and asking him. I really like that Harry's perspective. And we know this, right? He's putting it in the same chapter. Harry is making an incorrect assumption that the killer is a woman because he has prejudices about women.

and then later he's making mistakes again interpreting people. So it's very consistent. I understand why it could turn someone off that Harry's consistently wrong about women, especially in the first couple of books, but I find it to be really good character development as we watch him learn from making a lot of these mistakes. Anyway, Harry goes on to accept the charge from Murphy. He will do his best to try to figure this out. And then he realizes...

He's got an appointment in five minutes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (46:33)
It's.

And so he rushes down the stairs and runs out the door. And that's the only reason he doesn't immediately get accosted by the men stationed outside waiting for him and the limousine where Marcon is waiting. I just, again, Harry's defense mechanisms are almost always funny and worth a chuckle. And the one that gets me here is when he says, can I help you gentlemen? And then he say, get in the car, blah, blah. And he's like, I like to walk.

It's good for my heart. Like, God, classic smart ass Harry. You're gonna get in the hot, gonna be good for your legs. It's also a really good comeback. Like, good job, Hendrix. And then he does eventually get in the car and we get to hear his first impression of Marcon.

Baloreilly (47:15)
Mm-hmm.

Quote, I leaned down to look into the backseat. A man of handsome and unassuming features, dressed in a casual sports jacket and Levi's, regarded me with a smile. And you would be? I asked him. His smile widened, and I swear it made his eyes twinkle. My name is John Marcon. I would like to discuss business with you.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:52)
That's such a great start to this character who feels like, we already know he might be a villain, right? We've been introduced as, well this was his enforcer, maybe he's involved in this somehow, and yet he's so polite, right? He's introducing himself and saying, Hendrix, stop being such a mean guy. I'll just invite him in here nicely. It's a purposeful juxtaposition, I'm sure.

him. Exactly right. It's a little bit of

Baloreilly (48:19)
Yeah, classic good cop, bad cop.

So Harry does get into the Cadillac and bemoans that this might make him even later for his appointment before he gets a closer look at John Marcon in the beginning of chapter three.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:34)
Quote, gentlemen, Johnny Marcon didn't look like the sort of man who would have my legs broken or my jaw wired shut. His salt and pepper hair was cut short and there were lines from the sun and smiling etched into the corners of his eyes. His eyes were the green of well-worn dollar bills. He seemed more like a college football coach, good-looking, tanned, athletic, and enthusiastic, unquote.

Baloreilly (49:01)
It's just such a good description. Well-worn dollar bills. I mean, my god.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:06)
Not brand new

dollar bills. That's a different color green. We all know what a worn dollar bill color green looks like. And he's giving us a very specific green for that. I love those similes that Butcher throws in here and well worn dollar bills is one of the great ones. I'm gonna go ahead and add that to our list.

Baloreilly (49:24)
softer, a little bit more gray than the the new ones, and also of course he's suggesting through the metaphor that Marcon is wealthy and has developed that wealth over a long period. The dollar bills are worn, he's been working at them a long time. Marcon also immediately, given what I'm a tutor, some of my students would call dad energy,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:45)
Ha

Baloreilly (49:46)
Marcon has this protector feel. He's a coach, he's a teacher, he's somebody who educates you. Seems very Moriarty, honestly. Butcher has definitely read some Holmes in the past. But it's part of the predator protector.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:58)
yeah.

Baloreilly (50:03)
male duality that Butcher has already started to kind of hint at in these works, that he develops as a theme, that those are the two roles men fall into. And part of what makes Marcon so dangerous is that he comes off as a protector. And indeed he is protective of things that are his, but he is first and foremost a predator lurking in the green of the tall grass.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:31)
Yep, and we're going to see more of that in a second when we start talking about his soul gaze. But first I wanted to go over the next piece where he tries to basically bribe Dresden regarding this case. And Dresden starts by saying, my standard fee is $50 an hour plus travel expenses, which to me,

seems incredibly reasonable when you have a monopoly on the wizard business in Chicago. So actually very reasonable. And I think that goes to say something about Harry in that,

he started this business to help people and he can't help people if they can't afford him.

Baloreilly (51:07)
Yes, my wife's a lawyer and I will tell you that when PIs bill a law firm, they charge a lot more than $50 an hour. It's not remotely close. Dresden is definitely cheap and part of it's because he's new, he's desperate for work. As a tutor, I have been there. I have charged literally this amount of money because I was like, please, you just have to say yes. I just need you as a client. So that's definitely part of it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:16)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Baloreilly (51:33)
Part of it is definitely also that sense that he wants to make sure that when somebody hires him, they feel like they're getting a good deal. He's worth it. You you feel good about the transaction. He's not trying to screw you. And Marcon, of course, says, great, $50. So let's say I pay you your standard fee, $1,400 a day, right? $1,200 actually. I corrected him. He beamed at me. An honest man is a rare treasure.

Marcone immediately tried to offer him more money than his fee actually works out to, and Harry correcting him just sets up their dynamic in a couple ways.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:10)
It sounded like a test too, right? He's allowing Harry to either A, actually be ignorant, not smart, not good at math, or he's allowing Harry to pretend to be ignorant in order to get some extra money. How Harry answers this question will...

tell Marcon a lot about who Harry is. And when Harry corrects him, it reveals that A, Harry is intelligent and quick enough to notice that Marcon was wrong, and B, honest enough to mention it. Or dumb enough to not notice that it was an opportunity, right? Like one of those things is true, but he chooses to interpret it as Harry is an honest person, and that's the correct answer, That's why Harry corrected him.

I thought that was a very interesting thing. One of the first things we see Marcon doing is testing Harry to try to figure out who Harry is. He already seems to know something of what Harry is and clearly seems to believe it as well. what was it that happened in Marcon's past that convinced him that wizards and magic were real? Because at this point,

He hasn't had a soul gaze yet. We haven't seen him see anything supernatural happen, but he obviously believes it and he does so enough to initiate a soul gaze on purpose. So I'd love that short story to find out how Marcon had his eyes open. But the next thing we do see is how Harry sees Marcon's soul.

Baloreilly (53:46)
So presumably, Marcon coming to this knowledge has something to do with his search for a cure for the Beckett's daughter. And Marcon, maybe found a wizard while he was doing that, maybe just heard the existence of wizards. But before we just move on, I want to point out that Marcon is not necessarily, because Harry's honest, noting that he passed a test. It's not a test in the sense of...

Harry can fail or pass. It's a test in the sense that he's trying to determine who Harry is, and he's genuinely pleased by the fact that Harry's an honest person who's also quick at math, but that's generally pleasing to him because it makes him feel like Harry's somebody who he can deal with, which is why, when Harry sort of refuses to do that later, it's somewhat irksome for Marconi.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:41)
Yeah, and he gives him several options that would maybe assuage his moral issue with this. okay, if you won't take my money because you don't want to work for me, what if I just paid you to go on a vacation? That's not so bad. And Harry still doesn't want to do that. And Marcon understands, okay.

Your moral compass is so strong, you don't even want to take my money, even when I'm offering it for free. How about you just don't get involved for your own good? This is bad. This is going to be hard. Just don't get involved. it's going to be better for you. And Harry says, no, screw that too. Like I'm not afraid of you. And that

it perplexes Marcon, He's used to being able to find a pressure point on someone and use it to get what he wants. Harry's maybe one of the first people that he's met that he cannot manipulate to do bidding,

Baloreilly (55:35)
And Harry tries to hit Marcon with a stare down here, presumably to get out of the car and end the conversation. And it does not work, which is surprising to him, because Harry is six foot nine and kinda scary looking and kind of an intense guy, and normally this works. But it leads to the first soul gaze we witness in this series. And Harry, looking at Marcon's soul, sees the following. Quote.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:44)
No.

Baloreilly (56:05)
He was a soldier, a warrior behind that relaxed smile and fatherly manner. He was going to get what he wanted, and he was going to get it in the most efficient way possible. He was a dedicated man, dedicated to his goals, dedicated to his people. He never let fear affect him. He made a living on human misery and suffering, peddling drugs and in flesh and stolen goods.

But he took steps to minimize that suffering because it was simply the most efficient means of running his business. He was furious over Tommy Tom's death, a cold and practical kind of fury that his rightful domain had been invaded and challenged. He intended to find those responsible and deal with them in his own way. And he didn't want the police interfering. He had killed before and would again.

And would all mean nothing more to him than a business transaction, than paying for groceries in the checkout line. It was a cool and dry place inside Gentleman Johnny Marcon. Except for one dim corner. There, hidden away from his everyday thoughts, lurked a secret chamber. I couldn't quite see what it was. But I knew that somewhere in the past there was something he would give anything to undo, would spill blood to erase.

It was from that dark place he drew his resolve, his strength. And then later, he had a tiger's soul."

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:41)
man, every single time we get a new soul gaze, it's always exciting because Butcher's just does such a great job of describing them in an interesting way. This one is one of the first ones, right? So he so far hadn't come to the idea, the realization that what he wanted soul gazes to be.

was like a visual metaphor for the person. I think the next one that we get a full description of is when he looks at Thomas's soul in blood rites. And in that one, we see Thomas in a mirror and the demon is on the other side of the mirror and they're fighting each other. And that is a very cool way to visualize it. But this way is just the ideas.

Baloreilly (58:09)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (58:23)
that he gets from him. It's not visual, it's all conceptual. And that is super cool. And the line, he had a tiger's soul was great. The other thing that comes to mind here is we'd almost never see Marcon lose his cool. If he had a superpower, it would be Poker Face, He only ever shows you what he wants you to see and...

yet when Dresden looks at him, he sees that Marcon is furious over Tommy Tom's death. So it's not that he doesn't have emotions, it's that he is so good at schooling his emotions on his face that he uses that as a weapon against other people. It's just a great insight into him.

Baloreilly (59:06)
Yeah, Butcher is not entirely consistent over how much of a sociopath Marcon is, but we do know that he's not totally dictionary definition, devoid of emotion, and devoid of regard or care for other people. He doesn't just protect his people out of a sense of, you know, they're his domain. It seems like, especially, you know, when he, you know, small favor getting the archive to go up to the helicopter first or whatever.

But, Marcon is going to attempt to give everyone he interacts with the impression that he has no emotions. And it's part of that strategy of never letting fear affect him, making the rational calculus that makes him a perfect foil for the emotionally driven Harry, that he's not going to let his emotions betray themselves to somebody he's interacting with.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:58)
Mm-hmm.

Baloreilly (1:00:05)
so that he gives himself the biggest informational advantage he can. It's poker face to the level of treating every interaction as though it is a game you can win or lose. And one of the coolest things that happens in this moment is he gets one over on Harry. Because Harry realizes that Marcon was trying to initiate the soul gaze to take the measure of it.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:00:31)
Right, somebody told Marcon all about how wizards work and how soul gazes work. We don't know who that was, but he had that information coming into this interaction. And maybe he only half believed it, but he believed it enough to try it. And after that, he was sold. Harry's a wizard, period, end of story, right? So we then get the description of Harry's reaction to Marcon. Quote, John Marcon.

wasn't like the other people who had seen my soul. He didn't even blink an eye. He just looked and assessed. And after a moment had passed, he nodded at me as though he understood something. I got the uncomfortable impression that he had duped me, that he had found out more about me than I had about him. The first thing I felt was anger, anger at being manipulated, anger that he should presume to soul gaze upon me."

Baloreilly (1:01:26)
Harry immediately reacting emotionally to someone getting one over on him, exact opposite of Marcon. But this is really something, because Butcher has already developed who Harry is. We had some discussion is Butcher seeing what Harry will be? Later in this book, I think yes, later in this book, one of the people on the third eye sees Harry and loses their mind.

I think at this point, looking at Harry, soul gazing Harry, already cracking gets frightened levels of scary. And Marcon just files it away for future use.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:02:11)
And I think it's partly because something in that soul gaze probably shows how much power Harry has, how scary he can be, his future self, in the same way that we could see like Molly's futures when he soul gazes Molly. Some piece of that element is in there. That's what people are seeing is the Harry as of the big apocalyptic trilogy when he's gonna have to take on some God or whatever, right? They're seeing that.

But maybe what Marcon is seeing and what they are missing because they are only seeing the big scary Harry is Marcon sees it all contained in an iron will of someone who has values and principles and lines they won't cross.

Baloreilly (1:02:58)
Yeah, Morgan, in the micro fiction that Butcher published around the release of Battlegrounds, discusses whether Harry is going to be the destroyer, that that's what everybody was afraid of. And that's clearly the thing that people see that scares the hell out of them, or, the shadow of that is something that plays a role in scaring the hell out of them. But Marcones realized something that we as a reader also realized pretty quickly. Harry's not going to be that. He's just got his...

anger, his power, leashed to too rigid a moral compass for him to ultimately turn out to be someone who selfishly seeks to dominate others for his personal gain. That's unlike Marcon, but I don't think it's something that he thinks is inherently incorrect. Marcon is more selfish than Harry, but I don't think he dismisses selflessness entirely.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:56)
No, and he sees this and says, I can work with this. I can use this to my advantage. Right? And he does that several times. you know what? Having a powerful, self-righteous wizard that is dedicated to taking on the bad stuff that might come into my town is actually a really useful thing. It's better for Harry to be alive than dead. As long as I don't do anything that gets on his radar, I'm golden. I can do...

all the drug running, all of the prostitution, all of the gambling, Harry doesn't care about all that. He considers that a moral police problem, right? But if I were to start selling people stuff like Third Eye, then you would have to worry about Harry. But as long as he doesn't touch Harry's domain, Harry won't touch Marcon's domain and Harry will protect Chicago from things that Marcon can't.

Baloreilly (1:04:49)
Right, and Marcon immediately tries to discourage Harry after taking the measure of him again from getting involved in this case. And Dresden asks, are you threatening me? And Marcon responds,

Quote, no, he said frankly, I have too much respect for you to resort to something like that. They say that you're the real thing, Mr. Dresden, a real magus. They also say I'm nutty as a fruitcake. I choose which they I listen to very carefully, Marcon said. Think about what I've said, Mr. Dresden. I do not think our respective lines of work need overlap often. I would as soon as not make an enemy of you over this matter.

quote, clearly respecting Harry's power, his capability, but also exactly what you said, and it's why I wanted to read this and just build off this. He could've, on finding out there was a real wizard in Chicago, put a hit out on him. Which is maybe the thing that your average crime boss would do. Wizards are real.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:50)
Yeah, this wizard

might get involved in my business. He seems to have a lot of morals and stuff. I should deal with him before he becomes a problem. That's almost like, think of the different reactions to Superman, The Lex Luthor reaction is, boy, that guy is way powerful. I can't control him. I must control him, Or he must be ended, one of those two things. That's the Lex Luthor response. But Marcon is a different villain.

Baloreilly (1:06:02)
Hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:06:18)
He doesn't think, well, Superman can't be controlled, therefore I must take him down. He thinks, Dresden, I can't control him, I can't buy him, and he's very powerful. But, he's a Boy Scout, he's got limits, therefore I can work with this. It's just such a different villain dynamic than we're used to, and it's why his sort frenemy relationship with Dresden is so interesting over...

the 17-ish books. By the time we get to Battleground, and again, spoilers, Marcon has picked up one of the Denarius coins. He might become more of a straight-up villain. We're really gonna have to see how that plays out.

Baloreilly (1:07:02)
Right, and you know, I love what you said about Marcon taking Dresden into account as opposed to trying to control or destroy him and that being his first inclination because my immediate thought was is Marcon just kind of excited that magic is real and it'd be like breaking a stained glass window to him to kill the first real wizard he meets. He does have the Becket's daughter, you know, who he's trying to cure through magic as soon as death masks would be

you know, emotionally something he couldn't do to just immediately take magic out of the world. But I think you're right. I think that analysis doesn't give Marcon's persona enough credit. It really is who he is. He sees Dresden and goes, I have information other people don't. I know there's a real wizard in the city. I can use this to my advantage. Period. The fact that it dovetails with maybe some other feelings he might have buried deep down is nice, but the cold rational calculus is

This gives me an edge.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:08:02)
Yep, and then, the next lines he says when Harry basically tries to threaten him back, because we just mentioned sort of Harry feeling threatened by the situation, feels like Marcon's gotten one over on him, Harry tries to threaten Marcon, and Marcon just kind of says, you should really try to be more polite, Mr. Dresden, it's good for business. And God, what a great line. That and his line when...

He says, say you're the real thing Mr. Dresden. And Dresden says back, they also say I'm not, he's a fruitcake. His line, I choose which they I listen to very carefully. Such a suave and cool line from a villain. man, or antagonist maybe. I don't know if that was straight up villain, but definitely an antagonist. And I just love the way that he's written, even from this first their dynamic is so interesting because they are so alike and so different.

same time.

Baloreilly (1:08:55)
It's really wonderful and you love the combination of condescension and education. Harry, if you're gonna threaten somebody, you you really wanna pick your spots better. that's just, I mean, just like, dude, how cool are you to, this guy could blow up the car. You know that, right? He could literally throw a fireball right now. And you're just like, hey, listen, if you, when you threaten somebody, you know, be a little bit more polite, you know, don't be as threatening.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:20)
you know what? Harry gets much better at it. I'm literally in the middle of White Knight. And this attempt at threatening, you don't want to make an enemy of me, Marcon. That wouldn't be smart. That wouldn't be smart at all. That sounds like a teenager's attempt to threaten somebody, like pretending to be tough and be a thug. Later, when Harry takes a ghoul, digs a hole, buries him in it up to the head,

Baloreilly (1:09:29)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:09:47)
burns the sand around him to glass and drops orange juice on him and then makes a path over to some fire ants and tells the other ghoul, I'm not gonna kill you. You're gonna go spread the word. Like, holy crap, Harry's gotten way better at threatening people and ghouls deserve it, let's be real.

one last thing I think we wanted to talk about here is how Harry... so here's the line that I wanted to talk about. Quote, if he got to thinking I was weak, I had a feeling that that polite smile and fatherly facade would vanish as...

thoroughly and quickly as it had appeared." Unquote. Harry's describing how

He has to remain with an untouchable image because that protects him. It acts as armor. And that is a mirror to Marcon because the entire reason that Marcon wants to handle this himself and not let the police handle it is because he wants it known that if you mess with people that belong to Marcon, you get your comeuppance period full stop. If everybody knows that for a

In nobody messes with Marcon. It's better for business that way. So he wants his reputation as a ruthless protector of what's his.

All right, so I think we've done these two chapters here to death. And so that means we're moving on to questions for Bob.

Baloreilly (1:11:20)
This week our question for Bob is, is Marcon actually good for Chicago? What do think, Bob?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:11:27)
sorry, Brian, I forgot to tell you, Bob can't make it this week. Apparently Harry's not letting him out, something about a sorority party, he's in the doghouse. So we'll have to try and answer it in his stead.

Baloreilly (1:11:37)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, well, I'll tell you what my thoughts are first. So I asked Reddit this question, and what I said was that Marcon in the world of the Dresden files is actually good for Chicago, because while in, you know, a normal city, a mafia boss is not a great thing to have,

In a city where the white court has their home base and supernatural threats are trying to take over and influence the mortal population, someone who's clued in and has access to the levers of power actually allows the interests of humanity to be looked after better. So Marcon, even at this point, regardless of how much he knows about the white court or et cetera, just by being the kind of person who's open to that, is sort of representing human interest.

in the face of supernatural threats that don't really exist in our world. So that was my initial reaction, but we had some great answers from Reddit too.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:12:43)
Yeah, my initial reaction to this question, at first I realized, okay, we can describe Harry's relationship with Marcon as kind of like frenemies because there are at least three times where Marcon has literally saved Harry's life. One in which a Valkyrie says, this was his time. He was supposed to die here in deadbeat and Marcon comes and saves him from the ghoul. But there's also,

Baloreilly (1:13:04)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:13:09)
the part in Death Masks where Harry counts on Marcon's helicopter. He says, he's a smart guy, he'll have figured it out, and he goes to the helicopter pad and there's Marcon, another great mirroring of these characters as being very similar. Marcon figures out what was happening and meets Harry there to help Harry, and Harry realizes that Marcon will be there and Marcon will help him.

All of that's happening like some weird telepathy that they don't even know about. So there are at least three times where without Marcon, Harry would be dead and Chicago would be way worse off as a result. Then the other first thought that I had was we don't have an idea of how much more effective Marcon is at crime, right? We know that he's brought down the violence on the street.

He has the special rule, no kids, et cetera, right? But if he is as effective as the books would have us believe, how many more people are gambling away their life savings in his illicit casinos? How many more people are getting addicted to drugs and wiling away their lives as a result because he has made them plentiful and somewhat affordable,

is not something we are able to easily take into account. Who knows? But let's go ahead and take a look at some of the answers.

There were three basic answers that we got out of these. One was straight up, no, he's not better for Chicago compared to the alternative. Another one is says, yes, he's better than the alternative. And the last one, a lot of people adopted, yes and no. So why don't we talk about the first one? Why do people think he's not better for Chicago?

Baloreilly (1:14:52)
Right, so looking from the perspective of some later books, we had answers like Forever Blue Shirt, who said, you know, do Victor cells and the Dentons and the events of death masks even happen without Marcon there? A major part of Small Favor happens, so the Denarians can recruit Marcon. Do the Denarians come to Chicago, try to get to Hades Vault without Marcon building it? So from the perspective of later in the series, he brings a lot of problems to Marcon.

Sarcastic Kenobi also mentioned that in Deadbeat, the reason why the word of Kemmler is in Chicago is because Marcon, let's Tony try to sell it there. We had some other answers though that focused on that suggested that Marcon is bad for Chicago in the sense that Marcon only does things that are bad. Versederich said,

not to people trying the drugs he provides for the first time, or who get in the way of his business dealings, or who take out ill-advised loans with his loan sharks. So from the perspective of Stormfront, if you just look at what he's doing, mostly his actions cause harm to people.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:16:02)
and some people did try to defend him and say he is better than the alternative. One example, Asmoten, says, Marcon embodies lawful evil.

which is generally much preferable to chaotic evil. There was then a discussion about how evil is Marconi. Is he more like lawful, neutral, hard to say? Genkind said lawful evil is the most dangerous and insidious form of evil, as it usually represents methodical, long-term evil that affects the largest number of people and infiltrates legitimate institutions to protect itself.

And that's an interesting look too. So somebody's like, lawful evil is better than chaotic evil. And somebody else is like, have you seen lawful evil? Cause it can get really bad and it can take on an air of legitimacy while doing so, which makes it much worse. There are no right answers to this kind of question by the way. It's really interesting to just sort of hear everybody's takes on it.

Baloreilly (1:16:54)
Yeah, I really

liked when Animar14 commented that, a crime lord that didn't victimize children and punished those that do would result in a reduction of trafficking throughout the entire Midwest of the United States. if you're looking at a broad scale, is he better than the alternatives kind of answer, there's a lot of things that Marcon's morals or ethics do that have knock-on effects also. So Marcon, if you consider him...

in terms of the alternative, you can think of them as being better because of those policies.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:17:27)
The other one that I thought was very intriguing, and this is sort of a counterpoint to the idea that you had mentioned before, I believe Forever Blue Shirt brought up that like Marcon is the cause of a lot of the problems that we see in the books, but he's also kind of the solution to many others. For example, nature abhors a vacuum, right? Marcon is tuned in.

to the supernatural. He makes himself the Baron of Chicago and he buys muscle that can enforce that title against supernatural threats. So what upbeat structure said, quote, the moment Marcon is removed for any reason, it's going to be chaos since everybody will be fighting to be the next Marcon. You want an idea what would happen if Marcon were suddenly to be taken off the board?

Look no further than everything that happened after changes. Harry wasn't gone but five minutes before the Fomor swept in and started trying to take over. And that was just one faction. Marcon had arguably more influence than Harry, so imagine that on a larger scale." Unquote.

Baloreilly (1:18:29)
Yeah, and that's why I think that so many people answered some version of yes and no, including the top comment on the Reddit post from Elphitch 47. Marcon is moving the crime and corruption away from the lower end of the wealth scale and towards the upper end. He's making the criminal organization more genteel, more powerful, less dirty. So in that respect, he's doing more bad.

if you're worried about the influence of criminals in Chicago, mean, Marcon is definitely worse than the alternative. He's way more influential, but he's also causing less of the worst harms and maybe less harm overall. And in that sense, he's unambiguously an improvement. So even in Stormfront, we can sort of say, depends on your definition of good.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:19:00)
Hmm.

Yeah, absolutely. So next week's question for Bob, we're hoping he should be able to show up next week, right? Yeah, definitely. How noir...

Baloreilly (1:19:28)
Yeah, definitely.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:19:32)
is the Dresden Files. We've talked a lot about these noir tropes that are built into the Dresden Files, especially the earlier books, and there's obviously a lot of influence there, but there's a lot of divergence as well. So I'm going to be reading, I'm going to be finishing The Maltese Falcon, and I'm also going to read The Big Sleep, hopefully by that time, and try to give a better idea of grounding of what do these other noir stories feel like compared to Dresden. And if you want to do some homework,

Those are some excellent places to start.

Baloreilly (1:20:03)
Yeah, and I what you said earlier about how the Dresdenophiles don't match some of the noir tropes in something like the Maltese Falcon, that they dial down some of the most egregious things to modern listeners, is an important part of having that discussion.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:20:21)
All right, with that, we're going to call it for this episode and next time we'll probably be looking at chapter four and five. We'll see you then.